Adena

How Adena began

Adena straddles the Jefferson-Harrison county line, its Jefferson County part in the southwest corner of Smithfield Township. The land was settled about 1800, when Daniel Hayne and John Stoneman took farms near the site, and the Presbyterian congregation at Adena organized on June 1, 1848; the post office opened in 1855. Legislator John McLaughlin suggested the name, from Governor Thomas Worthington's Chillicothe estate. John Hunt Morgan's raiders entered Jefferson County at Adena on the morning of July 25, 1863. The village was never formally platted; it was a hamlet of 45 in 1880 and grew after it became a Wheeling & Lake Erie station to 570 in 1910 and a peak of 1,703 in 1940. It had 664 residents in 2020.

Settled c. 1800 (Daniel Hayne and John Stoneman took farms near the site), platted never formally platted -- lots sold and buildings erected individually over time, per the 1880 county history, incorporated date not found; a village corporation and school district exist by 1910, by named at the suggestion of Ohio legislator John McLaughlin.

Where the name comes from

Named after Adena Mansion, the Chillicothe estate of Ohio Governor Thomas Worthington, at the suggestion of Ohio General Assembly member John McLaughlin (who served 1803-1816); Worthington's estate name later also gave its name, independently, to the Adena archaeological culture of mound-building peoples that took its name from the same mansion grounds.

Before the town

No source names a Native village, mound or encounter within Adena itself. The village's name is borrowed from Adena Mansion, the Chillicothe estate of Governor Thomas Worthington, which also gave its name to the Adena culture of mound builders (about 800 BC to AD 100); the two naming events are unrelated to anything in Jefferson County. The 1910 county history places the first settlers around Adena in 1800 and a Quaker influx from North Carolina in 1798-1800, and mentions 'Jacob Holmes, the Indian scout' with a government grant in Smithfield Township, but no Native site is located near Adena. Down in Warren Township the same history reports mounds and relics along the river bottom.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee, Wyandot, Lenape (Delaware).

Timeline

1. 1800 — Daniel Hayne, who lived to 101, and John Stoneman take farms near the future site of Adena in Smithfield Township; Stoneman settles on what became the James Russell farm.
2. c. 1802 — John Jamison's family, the wife riding a cow with a baby in her arms, comes up Short Creek from the Ohio River and squats on land near Adena, where neighbors build them a cabin.
3. 1848-06-01 — The Short Creek Presbyterian church at Adena organizes with twenty-two charter members, including the Kerr, Stringer, Brown, Hagan and Hamilton families, and builds a house the same year at a cost of $825.
4. 1855 — A post office called Adena is established with Peter Hixon as first postmaster, though initially with no mail route; John Bendell becomes the first acting postmaster once service begins.
5. 1863-07-25 — Morgan's raiders, their column shrunk by Buffington Island and pursued by Hobson's cavalry, enter Jefferson County at Adena in the early morning after spending the night between Georgetown and Adena.
6. 1878-10-31 — The Adena Presbyterians dedicate a new frame church, 50 by 36 feet and costing $2,400, with Rev. Robert Alexander preaching the dedication sermon; the old church had been torn down earlier in 1878.
7. 1880 — Adena counts 45 residents in the census, a hamlet in the southwest corner of Smithfield Township.
8. 1910 — The census counts 570 people; the county history calls Adena 'a neat little village of about 600 people' that has built up considerable trade since becoming a station on the Wheeling & Lake Erie Railroad, with its own school district and a post office with rural delivery.
9. c. 1910 — Small coal mines work the No. 8 seam at Adena (Casner's and Hamilton's, with mule or ox haulage), and William Moke of Adena superintends the Roby Coal Company's drifts at Ramsey.
10. 1920 — Adena's population is 724, rising to 1,286 in 1930.
11. 1940 — Village population peaks at 1,703.
12. 2020 — The census counts 664 residents, down from 759 in 2010.

Stories

A name borrowed twice from the same estate

When Ohio legislator John McLaughlin suggested naming this Jefferson County village Adena, he was reaching for Adena Mansion, the Chillicothe estate of Governor Thomas Worthington. Decades later, when investigators excavated a large burial mound on Worthington's land, they borrowed the estate's name for what became the Adena culture, the mound-building people who lived across much of Ohio and the mid-Ohio Valley roughly 800 BC to AD 100. This Jefferson County village and the archaeological culture share a name purely by way of that one Chillicothe property; the village has no known direct connection to Adena-culture sites.

A village that never was platted

Unlike Smithfield and York, the other two villages of Smithfield Township, Adena never went through a formal act of laying out streets and lots. The 1880 county history describes it simply as sitting in the southwest corner of the township, where 'lots have been sold from time to time and buildings erected upon them' -- a store, a few mechanics' shops and a good Presbyterian church. That congregation, the Short Creek Church at Adena, organized on June 1, 1848 with twenty-two original members and built its 46-by-36-foot meeting house that same year at a cost of $825. The post office followed in 1855.

Morgan's raiders at the county line

On Saturday, July 25, 1863, John Hunt Morgan's Confederate raiders, their column shrunk by the defeat at Buffington Island, crossed into Jefferson County at Adena. They had spent the night between Georgetown and Adena. Smithfield, six miles off, heard firing from Adena's direction, and forty armed townsmen with no officers marched out in two bands, one on the York road and one on the Mount Pleasant pike. Morgan took the Mount Pleasant road and met the Smithfield men, breaking their guns, putting their leader Captain Collins on a mule and marching them through Smithfield's main street under orders to announce that these were Hobson's Union men and to feed them well. The citizens brought out plentiful provisions and did not discover the trick until too late: Morgan moved on with fresh horses and let his prisoners go, and when Hobson's tired and hungry men arrived that afternoon they found the larder swept clean.

A cow, a baby and a borrowed cabin

Daniel Hayne, who lived to be 101, told his descendants that about 1802 the family of John Jamison, a husband, wife and several children, came up Short Creek from the Ohio River to near Adena and squatted on land there, the wife riding a cow with a baby in her arms. The settlers jointly built them a cabin and, by custom, let Jamison crop all the land he could clear in order to give him a start. It was the beginning of the well-known Jamison family of Harrison County. Hayne's own family was early and long-lived on the same ground: his grandson Alonzo was born on the farm next to the old homestead in 1841, and his great-grandson Ernest, born at Adena in 1878, became a bank cashier in Mount Pleasant.

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · archive.org · archive.org · archive.org · archive.org

Every historic place in Jefferson County on the full map

Mostly private wells The water here

• Adena Village68% of residentsOhio River valley aquifer (wells)
• Tri-county Water Authority26% of residentsOhio River valley aquifer (wells)
• Cadiz Village6% of residentsTappan Lake
• HCWSD - Georgetown0% of residentsOhio River valley aquifer (wells)
• New Athens0% of residentsOhio River valley aquifer (wells)
• HCWSD - East Cadiz0% of residentsTappan Lake
• HCWSD-unionvale-kenwood0% of residentsTappan Lake

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Public schools (1)

Public libraries (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2015: 14 of 15 passed; of those asking for new or higher taxes, 0 of 1.

Ballot issues

Elections for office

Winners in bold. Results from the county board of elections' official canvass unless marked.

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Financial Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-07-31

Source: Ohio EPA eDocument portal (edocpub.epa.ohio.gov), indexed 2026-10-14. Facilities are placed on the map from Ohio EPA's own map layers, EPA's Facility Registry, coordinates written in the filings, or a geocoded street address. A permit filed under a private person's name (most are household septic systems) is counted but never named, placed or linked; licenses for individual workers and open-burning notices are left out entirely.

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